MediaTek Unveils Dimensity 9500: Apple A19 Pro Competitor
Credit: MediaTek
MediaTek unveiled the Dimensity 9500 microprocessor, built on the latest Arm C1 cores and designed for flagship smartphones. The chip combines not only new processor cores and the Arm Mali-G1 Ultra graphics accelerator, but also a more powerful neural network processing unit (NPU) with support for in-memory computing and ternary language models.
The company announced a complete architecture overhaul, significantly increasing computing power. The Dimensity 9500 is manufactured using a 3-nanometer process and contains over 30 billion transistors.
The CPU consists of three clusters. The first is a C1-Ultra supercore with a frequency of up to 4.21 GHz. The second cluster consists of three C1-Premium supercores, and the third cluster consists of four C1-Pro supercores. The platform also features the SME2 (Scalable Matrix Extension 2) instruction set for the first time. A quad-channel UFS 4.1 flash memory controller is integrated into the platform.
The Ultra core delivers up to 55% lower power consumption under heavy loads, extending battery life. The chip is 30% more energy efficient when multitasking, launching and interacting with games, calling apps, and social media. Overall, power consumption is reduced by 37%.
MediaTek emphasizes that the new CPU architecture, based on Arm V9.3, delivers a significant performance boost. According to the company, the new platform is 32% faster than the Dimensity 9400 in GeekBench 6.4 in single-threaded testing and 17% faster in multi-threaded testing. In single-threaded mode, the result exceeds 4000 points, which is comparable to the new Apple SoC.
The first smartphones based on the new Dimensity 9500 chip will be unveiled in October. These devices are expected to come from Vivo and Oppo, with other manufacturers to follow suit later.
